Eighteen saliva and 84 vaginal or postcoital slides were collected from volunteers. One-half of the slides were fixed by flame and the other half with a chemical fixing agent. The fixed slides were stained with one of the following techniques (22 for each stain): Papanicolaou, May-Grunwald-Giemsa, Hemaoxylin-Eosin, and Baecchi. The stained slides were mounted in "Canada" balsam, covered with a glass coverslip, and left for 2 weeks at room temperature. Then the coverslip was removed by immersion in xylene overnight, and the smeared region of each slide was swabbed with sterile cotton wetted with autoclaved distilled water. The DNA from these swabs and the corresponding saliva samples from the male and female donors were extracted with Chelex. HLA-DQA1, PolyMarker, Amelogenin, HUNTH01, HUMV-WFGA31, HUMF13B, and HUMFES/FPS were determined. With the exception of the forensic Baecchi stain, all the PCR-systems gave consistent results compared with the reference blood from the donors. Cytological stained smears can be important evidence for identification in sexual assault cases and in missing person cases. 1 table, 6 figures, and 23 references